ESA gives up hope of contacting Mars moon probe

Update on 7 December:ESA says: "Following a request from Russian mission authorities, ESA is continuing its efforts to communicate with Phobos Grunt via the Agency's 15 m-diameter Maspalomas tracking station located in Spain. Communication attempts on Monday, Tuesday and today, which made use of a redundant transmitter on board the spacecraft, did not succeed. The Agency has agreed to continue the effort until Friday, 9 December."

The European Space Agency has given up trying to contact the Russian Mars probe Phobos-Grunt, which is currently stranded in Earth orbit.

Phobos-Grunt successfully launched from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on 8 November with plans to land on the Martian moon Phobos and bring a sample back to Earth. It carried with it a Chinese satellite and 10 hardy organisms intended to test the idea that life on Earth could have come from space.

But the probe got stuck after the thrusters that were supposed to boost it out of Earth orbit and on its way to Mars failed to fire.

An ESA ground station in Australia contacted the probe briefly on 22 November and 23 November, but since then the spacecraft has been silent.

"Efforts in the past week to send commands to and receive data from the Russian Mars mission via ESA ground stations have not succeeded; no response has been seen from the satellite," the agency says in a brief statement posted on their website. With the tracking antennas needed for other duties, ESA has decided to stop listening.

Some slim hope remains with a Russian station in Kazakhstan, which heard from the probe on 24 November. Subsequent attempts have been fruitless, however.

Even if Phobos-Grunt begins responding, Mars is already well out of reach. The Red Planet comes into alignment with Earth for only a few weeks at a time every two years, and this year's launch window has ended. Phobos-Grunt mission scientist Alexander Zakharov has said that if the spacecraft is fully operational, the best scientific mission for it would be to study a near-earth asteroid.

Justthought of something. .how much would it cost to send up a small drive, comms drone on an Orbital Technologies Pegasus to try close up signaling and visual, thermal observations, maybe using some foam mounted high strength magnets for attatching if need be to act as support?

If the engine is as restartable as they say it is, they could use it for trying alternative routes to destinations, thereby opening up access further for robotic probes at least?